index index index index As a member of [...], I wrote a newsletter about the author Tony Hillerman. I had never read one of his mystery novels, which the research for the newsletter inspired me to do. I am glad that I did. It's been a few years since I read a mystery novel and Tony Hillerman brought me back 'into the hunt' with this novel. I found it was an enjoyable novel with good characters a dandy plot. I wish the ending would have been a little stronger, but I believe that it always my opinion at the end of a good novel. I guess this is one those novels I just wanted to keep going.
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves mystery novels or who has a fond appreciation for the Native American cultures.As with all the Tony Hillerman books, a good read, a great mystery, and fabulously accurate background that flows, unnoticed, into the story.I love the fact that this is a series of books with the same people. very good reading.Time goes on and the protagonists Leaphorn and Chee are back for one more puzzling crime. Bernadette Manuelito has messed up a crime scene and Jim Chee is upset with her about it. Leaphorn is finding leads even though he is supposedly retired. The stories of Chee and Leaphorn weave together in a now predictable arc that has pretty much been used in every single Hillerman novel. But in the end, its nice to meet up with two interesting and engaging characters and its easy to overlook a tired plot device.

I have never understood why Hillerman didn't stretch his imagination a little more with these books. The strengths are 100% in the characters and the evocative interactions they have with one another. The mystery is just background noise after a while and takes a second seat to the Navaho country that unfolds throughout every book. I am allways reminded of 'Murder She Wrote' and how Angela Landsburry stumbels across one murder after another and how they are all wrapped up in similar regards. This is in my mind the only thing that holds Hillerman back from being a true master of his craft.Bernie is no longer feeling like the greenest rookie of the Navajo Tribal Police. She is finding Jim Chee hard to understand. She runs into an unconscious or dead man in a truck and calls it in. An ambulance is to arrive in less than an hour. It seems that the dead man is the nephew of a sheriff and that he had been killed by rifle shot.

Jim Chee feels incompetent around his former boss, Joe Leaphorn. Chee is not popular with the FBI. The FBI has been called into the investigation. The FBI is finding a problem with the crime scene conduct of Bernie Manuelito. She did not ascertain the cause of death. Cultural factors mitigated against her touching and moving the body. Bernie finds stickers and seed pods on the pants legs of the victim and seeks the advice of her uncle who is a sort of amateur ethnobiologist.

It seems that the victim had read records on ethnology and gold prospecting. An earlier murder may have been related to gold prospecting. Joe Leaphorn, now retired, believes that the earlier murder had not been solved properly. Bernie locates the site of the gold panning. Next she is shot at by a rifleman. Shooting at a cop is felony. Bernie calls Jim Chee to give him the probable location of the murder. She finds out that she has not been suspended from the force as she had believed.

Chee is rattled and forgets to apologize to Bernie for being so abrupt. Joe Leaphorn is contacted by Denton, the alleged murderer in the first incident, who asks him to find his missing wife. Denton asserts that his young and beautiful wife did love him. In gambling it is called looking for tells, signs, given off by the other players. In the oil lease business, and Denton was successful in it, a person has to have scepticism. In the adventure Jim Chee is falling in love with Bernadette Manuelito. In the end Bernie wants to get another job where she is not arresting people, but helping them. To Officer Bernadette Manuelito, the man curled up on the truck seat was just another drunk -- which got Bernie in trouble for mishandling a crime scene -- which got Sergeant Jim Chee in trouble with the FBI -- which drew Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn out of retirement and back into the old "Golden Calf" homicide, a case he had hoped to forget.

Nothing had seemed complicated about that earlier one. A con game had gone sour. A swindler had tried to sell wealthy old Wiley Denton the location of one of the West's multitude of legendary lost gold mines. Denton had shot the swindler, called the police, confessed the homicide, and done his short prison time. No mystery there.

Except why did the rich man's bride vanish? The cynics said she was part of the swindle plot. She'd fled when it failed. But, alas, old Joe Leaphorn was a romantic. He believed in love, and thus the Golden Calf case still troubled him. Now, papers found in this new homicide case connect the victim to Denton and to the mythical Golden Calf Mine. The first Golden Calf victim had been there just hours before Denton killed him. And while Denton was killing him, four children trespassing among the rows of empty bunkers in the long-abandoned Wingate Ordnance Depot called in an odd report to the police. They had heard, in the wind wailing around the old buildings, what sounded like music and the cries of a woman.

Bernie Manuelito uses her knowledge of Navajo country, its tribal traditions, and her friendship with a famous old medicine man to unravel the first knot of this puzzle, with Jim Chee putting aside his distaste of the FBI to help her. But the questions raised by this second Golden Calf murder aren't answered until Leaphorn solves the puzzle left by the first one and discovers what the young trespassers heard in the wailing wind.

A lost gold mine, a corpse in an abandoned pickup truck, and an eerie wailing heard on Halloween are among the delicious plot elements Tony Hillerman cooks up in his 15th novel featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. The two Navajo cops, one old and one young--who originally debuted in separate series but have been collaborating for many books now--are among the most engaging, fully human characters in crime fiction. As usual, Hillerman puts them to work in a suspenseful, satisfying tale that integrates a wealth of Navajo lore plus breathtaking evocations of the American Southwest, all delivered in prose as clear, clean, and easy-flowing as a mountain stream. Longtime readers will be delighted by several developments, including a prominent role for the appealing Officer Bernadette Manuelito and a glimpse at the phlegmatic Leaphorn's testy side. But Hillerman welcomes new arrivals as well, with enough exposition to get you oriented.

Many writers have tried to follow Hillerman's trail, setting murder mysteries in Native American cultural landscapes. Many do a fine job. But, as The Wailing Wind beautifully demonstrates, there's only one Tony Hillerman. In this book he's at the top of his game. --Nicholas H. Allison suria review reviews analysis analyze